
We somehow managed to get it running on the woefully underpowered Teletext PCs - albeit in a postage stamp-sized window - just enough to be able to fudge a review.
So, more like losing your virginity to Jane Russell, if Jane Russell had been a primordial dwarf. And imagine that you then had to write an article about your experience, without letting on that she only came up to your knees.

The second PC game I ever played was a text-based multi-user dungeon adventure that we somehow discovered at work, once Teletext learned how to link its computers to the Internet.
Whole days were wasted playing it, usually at the expense of several of the other players, who took the fantasy setting slightly too seriously. It's fair to say I made some enemies on there, in part because it was possible to edit the text that popped up automatically whenever your character entered a new location.
Apparently "Mr Biffo enters, pulls down his trousers, and drags his bare buttocks across the floor towards you" wasn't treating the game with sufficient respect.
A LONG TIME AGO...
When it came to reviewing for Digitiser, I was the console guy - in part because I already had all the consoles. Adam (Mr Cheese) was the Amiga guy - because he already owned an Amiga.
And Tim (Mr Hairs) became the PC guy, because he went to considerable lengths to blag the department a free PC which he then took home with him. I recall his precise words being "Sorry, but I'm having this", as he carried the PC to his car.
I probably would've ambled along quite happily without a PC for some considerable time, had it not been for the 1995 release of LucasArts' Star Wars: Dark Forces.
The combination of first-person shooter and Star Wars was impossible to resist. Though I couldn't afford a top-end machine - Tim warned me that I'd have to upgrade it within a year - I managed to scrape enough monies together, mainly through flogging some of my old review copies to the second hand shop - to afford a PC that could run Dark Forces.
It was a revelation; we were two years away from Goldeneye on the N64 at that point, and there was nothing like it on the consoles. The buzz I got from seeing that main menu for the first time, from hearing that music, was tangible. As far as I was concerned, I was in Star Wars. It remains one of my favourite games of all time, and I don't think there has been a Star Wars game since which has so successfully evoked the spirit of the movies.
And I dare say part of the buzz came from finally being a PC owner; my experience of Personal Computers up to that point had been ones that were plugged into tellies, or had rubber keyboards, or ran games on cassette. All round, the PC was a whole new level of sci-fi.

It wasn't all about Dark Forces, mind; there are other highlights from my time as a PC gamer.
Blade Runner, Duke Nukem 3D, Command and Conquer, Outlaws, Urban Chaos, Quake II (I never got along with the original Quake; I just remember it feeling like sticking your face in a bowl of Twiglets); they all rank up there among seminal moments for me.
Unfortunately, over time, I developed a proper love/hate relationship with the PC. Frankly, I found it so profoundly flawed as a platform - so prone to crashing and being weird - that I think I'd struggle now to ever go back (I switched to Mac almost 10 years ago). It'd be like continuing to go out for drinks with a mate, if every time you saw him he started twitching and curled into a ball under the table, or threw up in your beer.
Plus, I seemed to go through PCs at rate of about one a year. The original Unreal killed one of them, such were its demands of the hardware. Another was throttled by a virus, for which there was apparently no cure. Another one - a laptop this time - died when I lashed out at the screen through sheer frustration. And another I damaged while trying to put something in its RAMhole.
Coupled to that, I sort of associate the PC with a generally awful run of years in my life. I mean, such was the tiny council house in which I was living when I first got one, that the only place for it (and me) to go was the cupboard under the stairs, which I shared with a piss-stinking hamster called Bobby. I was, quite possibly, the inspiration for JK Rowling's popular "wizard" character Harry Potter.
Once I stopped needing a PC to review PC games, I wasted little time in jumping onto Apple's back. Obviously, the Mac isn't known as a system for gamers, but its reliability and ease of use compared to Windows offset any regret I might've felt over waving goodbye to PC games.
For all my hard worn resistance, I'm slightly starting to warm to the idea of PC gaming again; having recently bought a slightly more powerful Macbook, to replace one whose A and Shift keys had ceased to work, I've finally engaged with Steam in a proper way. And though I might appear to baulk at the idea of VR... I wouldn't be any sort of gamer if I wasn't at least slightly interested in it.
I know that the only way I'm going to have a proper, 360-degree, appreciation of the modern gaming scene is if I swallow my prejudice, and re-engage with the PC again. Maybe it's time; I just need to move the tumble dryer out from under the stairs.
Anybody got one they don't want?
THE COMPLETE GAMES OF MY YEARS by Mr Biffo